Don Pendleton: Treason Play

Once he had dragged the man a safe distance from the vehicle, he stretched him along the ground. The soldier pulled a small flashlight from a pocket, clicked it on and ran it over Khan’s blood-soaked form. Three bullet holes had pierced the man’s chest.

Khan’s eyes fluttered open. Bolan noticed that the former ISI agent’s gaze looked unfocused. His breath came in shallow puffs. After a second, Bolan’s presence registered with him, and he turned his head slightly to look at the big American.

“Cooper,” Khan told him. “It’s not over.”

“It is for you,” Bolan growled.

“Not for you. Not even close.”

A shudder passed through Khan, and he was gone.

Mack Bolan ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

I know that there are angry spirits

And turbulent mutterers of stifled treason,

Who lurk in narrow places, and walk out

Muffled to whisper curses to the night;

Disbanded soldiers, discontented ruffians…

—Lord Byron, 1788–1824

Conspirators lurk in the shadows, biding their time, hiding their faces. I’ll drag the criminals into the light of day and unmask them for all to see.

—Mack Bolan

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Terry Lang pretended not to notice the man following him.

In fact, it was the third man he’d pretended not to see in the past couple of hours. Whoever had taken it upon themselves to track his every move at least had shown enough sense to switch out the agents following him, a small attempt to hide that they were tailing him. But their skill had ended there. The first and the third had fallen all over themselves to not make eye contact with Lang, averting their gazes as if burned whenever he looked directly at them.

Lang stopped and bought a bottle of root beer from a street vendor. Unscrewing the cap, he brought the glass bottle to his lips, drained some of it and resumed walking. After two more blocks he spotted what he’d been looking for, an alley. Slipping inside, he advanced several yards. Along the way, he tipped the root beer bottle and drained its contents onto the cracked asphalt. It made a fizzing noise and welled up in a whitish foam. The odor of garbage cooking under Dubai’s midday heat registered with him and his nostrils wrinkled reflexively at the stench.

He found a recessed doorway and pressed himself inside its shade.

He switched the empty bottle to his other hand, his ears strained as he waited. Surely his tail hadn’t fallen back? He doubted it. They hadn’t followed him halfway across the city just to fall back when he disappeared into an alley. They didn’t strike him as particularly skilled, but they seemed committed.

Sweat beaded underneath his hairline, then rolled down his temples, cheeks and jawline. His pulse quickened. Moments later he heard the soft shuffling of shoe soles brushing against the pavement. The muscles of his legs, arms and torso bunched up as he prepared to pounce. A dark shadow stretched along the ground past his hiding place.

The sound of movement halted.

A small grunt telegraphed the guy’s next movement. By the time his pursuer rounded the doorway, a small, black automatic pistol clutched in his hand, Lang was prepared. He brought the bottle down in a wide arc. The fat end of the bottle exploded into a constellation of glass shards that glinted in the sunlight. Lang’s downward swing continued, the edges of the broken bottle raking flesh, opening crimson ravines in his face.

The man yelped in pain and surprise. He whipped his head away and covered the wound with his hand. Blood immediately seeped between his fingers. In the same instant he started to raise his shooting hand so he could get a bead on his mark.

Lang’s hand snaked out and he caught the guy’s wrist in his grip, squeezing hard. His other hand, the one clutching the neck of the bottle, came around in a horizontal arc. Lang buried the jagged end into his attacker’s eye socket.

The man screamed and wheeled away. His grip on his pistol loosened and the weapon fell to the ground. Lang gave the injured man a hard shove in the chest that sent him reeling.

Grinning, Lang tossed aside the remnants of the bottle. He scooped up the man’s discarded pistol and grabbed a handful of the man’s blood-soaked shirt and yanked him to his feet.

Shoving the guy into a wall, he pressed the gun’s muzzle into the man’s throat.

“Who sent you?” Lang asked, his voice barely a whisper.

The man, his face and neck streaked with blood, spit in Lang’s face. With the back of his fist, Lang wiped the glob of blood and saliva from his forehead.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he said. “Who sent you? What do you want with me?”

The man’s lips curved outward as though he was ready to spit again. This time Lang drove a knee into the guy’s groin, eliciting a sharp draw of air, followed by a gut-churning moan.

“I can do this all day,” Lang said.

And to prove his point, he kneed the guy a second time. Groaning again, the man sagged and Lang let him crumple to the ground.

The squeal of tires on asphalt caused Lang to spin. A big midnight-blue sedan jerked to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Front and back doors snapped open and four men spilled from the vehicle’s interior, guns drawn, sites trained on him.

“Drop it!” someone yelled in English.

He guessed he could take out one, maybe two, before they killed him. More likely one. And then he’d end up on a slab. He still had no idea what this was all about and it was possible that, since he hadn’t killed anyone, he could talk his way out of this. He knelt and set the pistol on the asphalt. Raising his hands, he came back up to his full height.

A rail-thin man in navy-blue slacks and a white dress shirt broke from the group of shooters and approached Lang. Keeping his gun trained on the American, the small man scooped up the fallen pistol and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He barked in Arabic—a language in which Lang was fluent—for someone to call an ambulance.

The guy gave Lang a murderous look. In return, he flipped the guy the middle finger.

“No ambulance,” a voice called in Arabic. “This one’s not worth the trouble.”

Lang turned and looked at the new speaker. A flash of recognition immediately morphed into dread.

A Caucasian man with sandy-brown hair, a wide face and flushed cheeks rounded the front of the sedan blocking the alley. He wore a blue polo shirt, tan slacks and brown loafers. If he carried a weapon, it wasn’t visible.